This invention relates to battery chargers and related systems for the operation of battery-operated vehicles. This invention especially relates to controllers for battery chargers which may be mounted either with the battery charger or on a battery-operated vehicle and may be separate or combined with circuitry for controlling the vehicle.
Some vehicles such as forklifts, golf cars and a variety of other large and small utilitarian vehicles such as electric lawn mowers, floor polishers and the like may include storage batteries as their main power source. Some battery-operated vehicles also use regenerative braking to feed power back to the battery in the battery-operated vehicles.
The prior art battery charger control systems and regenerative braking systems have several disadvantages, such as: (1) the regenerative braking systems have a tendency to damage batteries by applying energy at an unfavorable rate to the battery at times such as when the battery is close to being fully charged; (2) some of the systems which utilize the amount of energy removed from the battery to determine the time at which the battery must be charged, provide inefficient finish current levels for the battery and do not provide readily accessible long-term information which can be useful in monitoring the battery; (3) the battery charging connectors are subject to arcing; and (4) a source of AC (alternating current) power is necessary for the control system on some battery-operated vehicles.